


Handle With Care

by letterspacing



Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-23
Updated: 2010-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-13 23:57:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letterspacing/pseuds/letterspacing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That's how Watanuki sees Himawari - pretty and porcelain, breakable, fragile: handle with care - not realizing that this one's already broken, and every time he tries to embrace her, he bleeds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Handle With Care

**Author's Note:**

> Meme fill for mushroom18, whose prompt was _xxxHolic - Himawari and Yuuko have small talk_.

**I.**

"And I think I'm really, really lucky to have met him. Is that fair? For someone like me to -"

The curve of her lips outlines secrets that she has never spoken. "Luck, fairness - there's no such thing. It's only been and always been _hitsuzen_."

"...Hitsuzen." Slow and hesitant, like she's tasting the word for the first time.

"So what now?"

"Are goodbyes fated too? Yuuko-san?"

Something flickers in her eyes (feline, stained golden by time and age) then, but it's gone too soon to have a name. "They're choices. Choices can hurt people."

"Then this will be the last time." Fragile. That's how Watanuki sees Himawari - pretty and porcelain, breakable, fragile: handle with care - not realizing that this one's already broken (like her smile right now, the fragments glimmering like little diamonds, who's to say that there isn't beauty in what's already been damaged?), and every time he tries to embrace her, he bleeds.

"And you?"

"He hurt me too, every time he kept coming back to me like nothing was wrong." Or maybe she's not smiling. Maybe she's frowning, even crying, but all the glass that's cut up and broken inside of her refracts the light, turning it all upside down. "I'll be okay," she adds, as though Yuuko had asked (and she hadn't). A second time, quietly, as if to convince herself: "I'll be okay."

 

 **II.**

She's crying when she walks away. Her shoulders are trembling, she feels cold suddenly, the kind of cold when you've just surfaced from the water and the wind hits you. It's as if the tears are running all over her, inside and out, and all she can do is wrap her arms around herself and shiver.

Only Watanuki can heal and destroy at the same time, but it doesn't always have a lasting difference. Fractured bones can mend to break again, as fractured souls and fractured glass.

But choices. Some choices take forever, Yuuko knows. Some choices last forever.

 

 **III.**

"Ne, Kunogi-san, what's that on your back?"

"A mark for protection. Something like a lucky charm. Pretty cool, huh?"

"Wicked. Where'd you get it?"

"A friend. A very special friend."

And their friendship was a choice that she hopes they'll never regret.


End file.
